OC Outdoors: A steelhead adventure on Vancouver Island

Randy at the oars

After leaving Toronto at 4AM, I arrived at the Lodge just after lunch, stopped only long enough to gear up, and then I was on the water with Randy Killoran. One of Vancouver Island’s best-known and most successful guides, one of Randy’s specialties is fly fishing rivers. The other, which he’s been doing since his teens, is rowing for tyees (chinook salmon over 30 pounds) in the annual tournament held by the Tyee Club of British Columbia in Campbell River. Here he scans for steelhead as we Huck Finn down the Gold River in an inflatable raft.